Team Japan took a huge victory at the 2012 Japan Open over Team Europe and Team North America.

1. Team Japan – 569.25

2. Team North America – 511.80

3. Team Europe – 510.52

At the Japan Open skaters performed only their free programs.

Daisuke Takahashi won the men's event over his rivals. A bit disappointig was Evgeni Plushenko's performance, who made several mistakes including a fall on the Axel jump. Patrick Chan did worse, falling four times and finishing at the last place. It was his first competition after changing his coach and it did not go very well as a test. But it is still early in the season, so let's wait and see. Jeffrey Buttle, the only skater of the 12 who isn't training for Olympic-eligible competition, placed third! He landed a triple axel, the jump that gave him all sorts of troubles years ago. The score he got at Japan Open would make him more than competitive on the Grand Prixs... not that he's making a comeback, regrettably for us.

"I'm 50-50 happy because it's still too early [in the new season]," Plushenko was reported to say by Vladislav Luchianov, special to icenetwork.com. "I look forward to competing much better, of course, with two quadruples in a clean program."

"The main thing for me is that Evgeni did two quads in one program since 2005," Mishin said. "As for the mistakes on the Axel, it was because of the absence of competitive events. Evgeni didn't compete for 10 months. Also, we didn't have enough time to work on the whole program. Having two quad jumps in free skating program is necessary to fight for the top places, so we pay maximal attention to this factor on the trainings."

1. Daisuke Takahashi JPN – 172.06

2. Takahiko Kozuka JPN – 165.08

3. Jeffrey Buttle CAN – 160.86

4. Evgeni Plushenko RUS – 156.21

5. Michal Brezina CZE – 151.53

6. Patrick Chan CAN – 137.42

Ashley Wagner had a superb start to her season, taking first over Mao Asada who looked solid anyway. Alena Leonova of Russia ended up in fourth place.

"In general, I evaluate my performance as a good one. I'm not so upset [about] my non-executed jumps as of today's terrible spins," Leonova was reported to say. "But I'm happy that I landed a flip at the end of the program. Also, I'm glad with my cascade of triple toe-triple toe."